Right and Wrong

Hey everybody. Been sitting here for the last 20 minutes trying to decide whether or not to even do this video, whether or not, is it … Would it have value? Is it something that people would even want to listen to? Is it something that would cause people to think? And it’s centered so … I was in the gym the other morning, and the thing came on about Matt Lauer and all this stuff that’s coming out lately. Around, just before the two minute mark on the video, it was Hoda and the other gal that were talking, and they were talking about, how do you reconcile with someone you love who has done something like this? And it just … I don’t know. Just watching it got me thinking. It’s like, okay, this whole Man Up piece, what does that mean? What does that involve, and how does that work? What does that look like? Obviously, manning up in the first place is not doing it, but manning up partially is about taking ownership of your actions, and so it just got me thinking about, okay, where is the lesson in this? Where does grace come in, in this? Does it come in at all?

For me, there’s certain situations where there’s no grace. You look at a pedophile. Sorry, no grace. The only grace you’re going to get is if the court system gets you before I do. That’s what I consider grace in that case. When it comes to situations like this, whether it’s men perpetrating it on women, or women perpetrating it on men, obviously one is not as common as the other, I think there still is an opportunity for grace. Now let me explain why I say that. Number one, let’s get this first and foremost out front and clear, subjecting someone to something that they do not want to be a part of and holding either a perceived or a certain power over someone to get that to happen, is wrong and there’s consequences for it, plain and simple. Someone being apologetic for it is good, but here’s the thing that I look for, where is the apology coming from? From what space? Is the apology coming from a space of true repentance, true … Someone feels absolutely terrible about it. They regret. True regret, is that where it’s coming from? Or is it coming from a place of regret, but not regret that they faltered, that they stumbled, because we all stumble, we all falter. The old, let the first one who’s without guilt throw the first stone, right, or if you live in a glass house, that whole piece.

Here’s the deal, we all screw up. There ain’t one of us on this planet that doesn’t and some of us just do it in a more grandiose fashion but the same point, where is the remorse? Is the remorse coming from getting caught? Because let’s face it, sometimes that’s the only place this remorse is coming. For a lot of these people, the remorse is simply crap, they caught me. It’s not that it was done. And so I look at what’s the history been? Was this something that happened 30 years ago and they’ve been a changed person ever since? Now hopefully whoever they offended back then, that they apologized too, that’s really what it involves. It’s, if you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, whether it’s related to this subject of something else, here’s, in my mind, here’s what should happen, number one, own it. Admit what you’ve done. Admit it to your God, admit it to the person you offended and ask for forgiveness. And this forgiveness doesn’t come with any buts or any commas, it’s simply I screwed up. It’s my fault. What can I do to make it right and will you forgive me?

In some cases the forgiveness piece may never come. You run that risk of depending on what you did, that’s how it works. In some places, people are bigger than we are and that forgiveness does come. But at the end of the day, that forgiveness piece needs to be done then. Now, if that somebody has done that, has made their apologies, made themselves right with themselves, with the person they offended and with their god, and here’s the thing, their behavior changed. So it’s been 30 years since it’s done and their behavior has been a complete 180, if you will, since that point, was it right? Does it excuse the behavior in the beginning, in the first place? No, it doesn’t. But here’s the thing, I have been given second chances more times than I deserve, whether it’s from my wife, my kids, my friends, my savior. It doesn’t matter, I’ve been given those second chances. I don’t deserve them. So, the one thing I do know is, anytime somebody is truly repentant, truly regretful for what they’ve done and they’ve apologized for it, there’s a second chance that does deserve to be given.

Completely different story if the regret comes from a place of, I got caught. That’s not regret. That’s just an oh crap moment, that’s all that it. And when it passes, the behavior continues. That’s the difference between manning up and not manning up, in my mind. And I think that’s where people, if I could give one piece of advice in this whole place, in this whole sea of what’s going on, number one, if this is happened to you, speak up. Number two, if you’ve done something, apologize for it, own it. Own it and repair it and move on and change. But I think we need to look carefully, at the person, at what the person was when this happened, what they’ve been since, and where things are now. I don’t know Matt Lauer, I don’t know, I did a thing on Harvey Weinstein and I called him a POS and I did all kinds of stuff like that. Yeah. I still think, I don’t think, based on who he is and what he’s done I don’t think he was regretful that he did it, I think he was regretful he got caught.

And that is complete opinion. That’s not fact, that’s not nothing. And I’ll own that. In all of these cases though I think that’s where we need to be, where we need to look, what we need to do. And it doesn’t matter what part of our life it is, that’s what manning up, manning up is taking ownership, apologizing, truly apologizing for whatever actions you did that need to be apologized for, then repair. And I think if we can do that, that’s what it’s about. And that grace piece, it is important. Especially if, like Randy says, if the regret is real. If the regret is real, grace is important because here’s the thing I do know, when you are not willing to give grace, and at some point you’re gonna need it, you’re gonna understand when it’s not given to you just how crappy it feels. You’re gonna understand and you’re gonna go huh. Maybe I need to go apologize for not giving grace to someone.

So, I don’t know. It was just on my heart. I was thinking about this today and I’ve been processing, like I said at the beginning of the video, whether or not to even talk about it but I think it’s important. I think, obviously action is the most important. Action and what it means to be a man in this case, because in these cases it’s, what we’re seeing is a lot of men that are being the perpetrator. So, I look at the millennial generation where people are talking about the millennials and they say, oh these dang millennials, these millennials don’t know how to work and they’re afraid of work and it’s just ridiculous and it got me thinking, I think I’ve talked about this before. Well, why? Because I do know this, as I’m raising my boys I know that my boys do what I do more than what I say. Their video recorders are always on. And they will do exactly what I do, good or bad, before they do exactly what I say they should do. And so when I look at the millennials and the people complaining about them it’s like well, why? Why are they supposedly that way? Not all of them are that way, I’m using a really broad brush to paint this picture. Why are they that way? They’re doing what they saw.

Maybe it was because, if that person is not that ambitious, maybe it’s because they were coddled. If that person doesn’t see the value in hard work, maybe it’s because they never had to do it. If that person is rude, maybe it’s because they saw that modeled for them. So as parents, I think that’s really important and as parents raising young men, this is part of the reason for this book, it’s part of the reason I wrote it, because quite honestly watching the way some of these boys are being raised scares the living shit out of me. And I’m sorry, see, here’s the thing. There’s gonna be people who are more concerned that I said the word shit than concerned about what’s actually happening, the way our boys are being raised, and that’s part of the problem, if I’m honest. That more people are concerned that I said the word shit on a Facebook live video, than are really concerned about how our young men are being raised. And you know how we change it? We change it with action, we change it with modeling the right behavior.

Because I tell you what, what scares the shit out of me is if I ever had to hear about one of my boys doing something like this, because at the end of the day that falls back on me.

I get it, they become their own men but I do know that they become their own men based on what they’re given as a model. And I couldn’t handle it. Those three young men are my job. They come before this, they come before business, they come before everything. Not before my wife, not before my savior but they come, they come right up at the top. And I hope that this book, again, I’m not perfect, I don’t have all the answers, I don’t have everything under control, but I hope the book starts to get us men thinking about what we’re doing, about how we’re raising these boys, these kids. It’s our job. If we want a world that’s full of this kind of shit, keep raising them the way we are. If we want to make the change, then we better be in action, we better be doing our job as fathers, raising our boys, teaching solid values and respect and modeling it for them.

So, phew. Yup. There’s your live video for today folks. Hopefully there’s some value in it. Remember, your kids are watching. Your boys are watching you and I guarantee you they’re gonna do what you do, whether it’s bad or good. I picked up all my dad’s bad habits as well as I picked up his good habits. It’s up to me to change the bad ones, just like it was up to him to change the bad ones from his dad. And it’s up to our boys to change the bad one’s from us, but at the same point, if they don’t have any good ones to fall back on, they’re screwed. So, give them some good ones.

Y’all have a good rest of the day.

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